Is this a new sensatiation into the issue of political
brutality in NY?

HARD TO SAY. IT WAS ALWAYS NAMIBIA, LIBERIA AND FEMALE CIRCUNCISION,
for years.

WE ARE YET TO SEE THE ISSUE OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE COUNTRY OF USA
WHEN
THE SPANISH OR OTHER "TERRORIST' BY THE STANDARD OF THE ARMED
CRIMINAL
WEARING THE UNIFORMCAN BE SHOT ON THE SPOT ( LOTS OF IT; NOW 6 SHOT IN
 ONE CITY IN A MONTH IN  OWN HOME AS SUPPOSE DOMESTIC VIoLENCE EVEN
NEWER THAN ABOVE;

 ( hackers try to lock out my post; can not correct)

WHEN THE COURT CLERK CAN ISSUE ENDLESS ARREST WARANTS without legal
bases ( he being
 a wrong person by law to do it)  AND THEY POLICE CAN RETAIN PERSON
MORE THAN
48 HOURS IN NJ , AND THAN PRETEND THAT NOTHING HAPPEN IS VERY NEW,
ALTHOUGHT
 IT COULD HAVE HAPPENED BEFORE BUT ONLY IN ISOLATED CONDITION - NJ IS
UNDER
THE FEDERAL MANDATE OVER THE RACIAL PROFILING AND ABOVE CASES MIGHT
JUST FALL UNDER THAT; ALSO WE HAVE HATE CRIME STATUE FOR RAPING IN
PRISONS;
 ( AND MUCH MORE)

 YET

NO SUCH REFLECTION IN 20 YEARS OLD HUMAN RIGHTS FESTIVAL IN LINCOLN
CENTER AGAIN.

Horror and Injustice Play Starring Roles

 By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Published: June 11, 2010
It is one of the most stunning moments in “Enemies of the People,” a
documentary that revisits the Cambodian killing fields of the late
1970s, and a high point of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival
opening on Friday at Lincoln Center. Thet Sambath, a Cambodian
journalist whose father and older brother were among the two million
slaughtered by the Khmer Rouge, coaxes a Cambodian farmer who carried
out its lethal orders to describe his method of execution.

Tońo Zúńiga, jailed in Mexico, in “Presumed Guilty.”
The farmer recalls in a dispassionate tone how a fellow soldier would
grab the bowed head of a kneeling prisoner and wrench it back so he
could slit the victim’s throat. After a while, he notes, his arm would
tire, and instead of slitting throats, he would simply jab in the
knife.

But the movie’s ultimate coup is Mr. Thet Sambath’s interview with the
octogenarian Nuon Chea, known at Brother No. 2, who was the chief
ideologue of Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge leader. The old man explains
that the Khmer Rouge was determined to establish a form of Communism
that was even purer than Chinese Communism under Mao Zedong.
(..)
Such issues are addressed each year by the Human Rights Watch Film
Festival, a traveling program of films about injustice and courage,
now in its 21st year. The New York segment of the festival consists of
30 films from 25 countries that will be screened at the Walter Reade
through June 24.

Although the festival includes features, documentaries predominate. As
the documentary bubble that began with Michael Moore’s “Bowling for
Columbine” and “Fahrenheit 9/11” deflates in today’s leaner economic
times, the Human Rights Watch Film Festival is one of the foremost
showcases of serious nonfiction films, only a handful of which will
end up on television.

After Thursday night’s benefit screening of “The Balibo Conspiracy,” a
drama set in 1975 in East Timor and based on the actual search for
five missing Australian journalists, the festival begins public
screenings on Friday with the New York premiere of Heidi Ewing and
Rachel Grady’s documentary “12th & Delaware.”
(..)
For all the zealotry on display, “12th & Delaware” is about as far
from a polemical screaming match as a movie about such a divisive
issue could be. Anti-abortion demonstrators explain their conviction,
usually religiously based and visceral, that abortion is murder. And
the nurses and assistants inside the clinic describe their struggle to
help women in the face of hostility and the risk of violence. We hear
the voices (but rarely see the faces) of several patients who receive
gentle, thoughtful, unpressured counseling from staff members. I can’t
think of another film on the subject that keeps its cool and allows
both sides to be heard at medium decibel.

A gripping feature film scattered among the documentaries and set in
Haiti a few years ago, Raoul Peck’s “Moloch Tropical” is a satirically
edged melodrama about the corruption of absolute power. The president,
who is going mad, lives in luxury in a hilltop fortress, below which
the festering misery of the populace is about to explode. A 200th-
anniversary celebration of Haitian independence is being prepared, but
as the unrest comes to a boil, distinguished guests and celebrities
from the around the world send their regrets.

The president (Zinedine Soualem), though democratically elected, is a
torturer and sexual predator. Mr. Soualem’s brooding intensity evokes
Frank Langella’s in “Frost/Nixon” but amplified to demented,
Shakespearean proportions. After festival screenings of “Moloch
Tropical,” some critics called it a comedy. I’m not so sure.

“War Don Don” examines the aftermath of the civil war in Sierra Leone
and the trial for war crimes of Issa Sesay, the highest-ranking
survivor of the Revolutionary United Front, which fought the
government for a decade. The film, directed by Rebecca Richman Cohen,
is less an investigation of guilt for war crimes than a contemplation
of the viability of international courts. The film suggests that the
hundreds of millions of American and British funds spent to build the
court might better have been used to revive Sierra Leone’s shattered
economy.

The closing-night film, “Presumed Guilty,” directed by Roberto
Hernández and Geoffrey Smith, examines the case of Tońo Zúńiga, a
Mexican scooped off the street in Mexico City and sentenced to 20
years for a murder he knew nothing about. The film follows the three-
year crusade of two young lawyers, Mr. Hernández and Layda Negrete, to
get Mr. Zúńiga a retrial. Against a background of Mexican courts and
prisons, the film portrays a national justice system that tends to
presume guilt and often uses torture and prolonged detention to elicit
confessions.

As calamities and political conflicts around the world accumulate, and
it is ever more tempting to throw up your hands, the Human Rights
Watch Film Festival is fighting the tide of cynicism and despair. The
Chinese proverb that Adlai E. Stevenson made famous in a 1962 tribute
to Eleanor Roosevelt — that it is better to light a candle than to
curse the darkness — applies to the Human Rights Watch Film Festival.
The illumination isn’t a candle but the light on a movie screen.

The Human Rights Watch Film Festival runs through June 24 at Walter
Reade Theater, 165 West 65th Street, Lincoln Center; filmlinc.com or
hrw.org/iff." NYT


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